Lots of Association documents now added, including minutes of General and Annual General meetings here.

Association Constitution and it's Objects. Get to them at the top of here.

"Woy Woy - Venice of Australia" - a 7 minute 1935 film about our surroundings from theNational Film & Sound Archive. See it here.

NBN on The Island

DISCLAIMER

This blog about the NBN on St Huberts Island is totally the work of the webmaster. It is the efforts and research done by a person with many years in the education field of computing and information technology. While far from an expert of some of the NBN technology, I am learning on the fly and in good faith passing my findings on to you - the St Huberts Island resident.

If you have any comments, corrections, questions about The NBN on The Island, email the webmaster.

As the National Broadband Network (NBN) arrives on The Island, some residents will just wait and get others to do what needs to be done when it is required.

Others are more interested in the progress and technology of faster broadband Internet as it arrives on The Island.

This long BLOG-LIKE section of the website is for the latter - enjoy...

Saw an NBN sub-contractor at one of the FTTN node boxes this afternoon, so I did a U-turn and had a yarn to him. He was a nice guy and more than happy to talk to me about what he was doing - unlike the previous subbie I chatted to.

He was doing final checks of all the circuitry, replacing faulty cards, checking communication through to the techs in Melbourne from the node box etc etc. He said as far as he was concerned everything is ready to go from his end on the street, but he didn't know what was happening back at the main exchanges where we get linked to the Internet.

And he had no idea when we would be up and running! Hopefully it is soon.

2015 - April to May

Significantly, the node boxes have now been connected to the Telstra pillars for all three Nodes.

During mid April to late May, sub-contractors were seen (and spoken to) at each of the three Telstra pillars connecting a large bundle of copper phone wiring from each node box to its nearby Telstra pillar.

I suspect this means there is now a connection from Woy Woy phone exchange to our landline socket in our wall at home. Now NBN needs to do their bit from the Telstra Woy Woy telephone exchange to the Internet.

A bit of research on the myNBN website seems to indicate we need to be connected to the NBN at Gosford rather than the Woy Woy exchange - this may be a special NBN building(?). All the NBN in the Gosford region seems to connect there - ie our "Point of Interconnect", called 2GOS.

The myNBN website also seems to indicate that (as at 1 May 2015) we should be ready for NBN connection on 1 December 2015, but maybe sooner as I have heard through the (2nd hand) grapevine that it may actually be some time in August 2015.

We'll just have to wait now for our current ISP (Internet Service Provider) to contact each of us about the looming NBN on The Island.

2015 - 30 March to 2 April

The concrete slabs for the three FTTN node cabinets on The Island have been poured and the Node cabinets bolted in place.

Only one is near its Telstra phone pillar. This is in Solstice Place. The other two Node cabinets are on the nature strip in front of 51 Helmsman and 97 Helmsman.

With the move of two of the nodes a little distance from their (to be) connected Telstra phone pillar, I'm not sure of the effect on the map I discovered, and referred to in the 25 March post below.

Stumbled across an interesting map about expected FTTN speeds in all properties on The Island...

2015 - about 13 March

The location of one of the FTTN cabinets is known. Unexpectedly it isn't beside a Telstra telephone pillar - it is across an intersection and down the road! One unmarked small tipper truck was seen forming up a concrete slab on Helmsman Bvd opposite Weatherly Pde. It is about 50 metres or so from the Marina View intersection pillar. It's definitely NBN as there is an NBN pit beside it.

2015 - 10 March

The first sod turned coincided with the March 2015 Island News. The Part 2 article on the NBN for St Huberts was written for the newsletter but there was insufficient room in it, so it appears on the website only - "NBN Co has broken ground on the Island - Part 2". This article includes a short history of the long and convoluted "birth" of the NBN, some of the terms used with the NBN, the current standing of the NBN on the Peninsular and how most of us get the Internet now.

The first NBN sod has been turned - machinery with their ever-present lollipop people were spotted on Helmsman Bvd. Their brief was to place new conduit in the ground where the old Telstra conduit was either too small (as in already filled up with existing Telstra cabling), or damaged, both preventing the pulling of new optic fibre cabling from the Telstra communications cabinet at the bottom of the bridge to the proposed FTTN NODE CABINETS near the three existing telephone pillars on the Island (locations in this article) . They were in the process of inserting new conduit under the Nautilus Cres/Helmsman Bvd intersection between two Telstra pits. Rather than cutting a trench across Nautilus they used an underground boring machine. Hopefully they will not need to cut into other roadway and very little new conduit needs to be put into the nature strips!

2015 - early February

Saw a Telstra truck at the main Island communications cabinet at the bottom of the bridge. I stopped to have a chat with him. Although he was an "exchange" technician rather than involved with the copper wire to our houses, I discovered there is optic fibre from the Woy Woy telephone exchange to this cabinet - this should mean that we may get the NBN on the Island "quickly". NBN won't need to pull optic fibre through Telstra underground conduit through to the Island, only from the main Island cabinet to each of the three "refrigerators" - the fridge sized FTTN cabinets placed near each of the three telephone pillars on the Island.

2015 - mid January

NBN action is happening! An NBN ute was spotted half-way along Helmsman Blvd, a hi-vis jacketed person standing in front of it, and a large set of plans in his hands.

2014 - 5 December

To begin informing Island residents a three page article ("The NBN has been announced for St Huberts Island - Part 1") appeared in the December edition of The Island News. It investigated popular NBN myths and what the NBN means to the Islanders.

On 20 October 2014, NBN Co announced that 38 suburbs on the Central Coast are earmarked for the next roll-out of the NBN - St Huberts Island is one of them. A visit to the NBN website shows that currently (November 2014) “Groundworks are underway to prepare this area for the NBN”. They continue to say that they “… will provide more information as works progress.” We will be getting the Fibre to the Node flavour of NBN - FTTN. There will be 57,000 homes involved with this exercise so it may take a while to happen!